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Edited Date/Time
1/27/2012 1:50am
Funny story of when Vonnegut was a Saab dealer. If you have to ask "Who's Kurt Vonnegut?" please ask your MX home school teacher. Full story after the link.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/1726/
The Saab back then was a far cry from the sleek, powerful, four-stroke Yuppie uniform it is today. It was the wet dream, if you like, of engineers in an airplane factory who had never made a car before. “Wet dream,” did I say? Get a load of this: There was a ring on the dashboard, connected to a chain running over pulleys in the engine compartment. Pull on it, and at the far end it would raise a sort of window shade on a spring-loaded roller behind the front grill. That was to keep the engine warm while you went off somewhere. So, when you cam back, if you hadn’t stayed away too long, the engine would start right up again.
But if you stayed away too long, window shade or not, the oil would separate from the gas and sink like molasses to the bottom of the tank. So when you started up again, you would lay down a smokescreen like a destroyer in a naval engagement. And I actually blacked out the whole town of Woods Hole at high noon that way, having left a Saab on a parking lot there for about a week. I am told old timers there still wonder out loud about where all that smoke could have come from. I came to speak ill of Swedish engineering, and so diddled myself out of a Nobel Prize.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/1726/
The Saab back then was a far cry from the sleek, powerful, four-stroke Yuppie uniform it is today. It was the wet dream, if you like, of engineers in an airplane factory who had never made a car before. “Wet dream,” did I say? Get a load of this: There was a ring on the dashboard, connected to a chain running over pulleys in the engine compartment. Pull on it, and at the far end it would raise a sort of window shade on a spring-loaded roller behind the front grill. That was to keep the engine warm while you went off somewhere. So, when you cam back, if you hadn’t stayed away too long, the engine would start right up again.
But if you stayed away too long, window shade or not, the oil would separate from the gas and sink like molasses to the bottom of the tank. So when you started up again, you would lay down a smokescreen like a destroyer in a naval engagement. And I actually blacked out the whole town of Woods Hole at high noon that way, having left a Saab on a parking lot there for about a week. I am told old timers there still wonder out loud about where all that smoke could have come from. I came to speak ill of Swedish engineering, and so diddled myself out of a Nobel Prize.
(not in this good of condition)
The Shop
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcriptNOW140_full.html
Mr. Vonnegut, thanks for coming by.
KURT VONNEGUT: My pleasure.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: How's life?
KURT VONNEGUT: Well, it's practically over, thank God.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: For Heaven's sake.
KURT VONNEGUT: I'm 80-- I'm practically 83. It won't be that much more of-- for me to put up with. I don't think.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, you were writing about maybe you want to sue your cigarette companies? You smoked all those years and there's a warning on the package saying that this will --
KURT VONNEGUT: Brown and Williams, on their package, promise to kill me. And they haven't done it. I mean, here I am 83.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: False advertisers on the cigarettes?
KURT VONNEGUT: Yes.
*******
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Mr. Vonnegut, how does a man stay funny when he thinks the world stinks like this?
KURT VONNEGUT: He smokes.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Is that the secret to humor?
KURT VONNEGUT: Yes. Yeah, it helps a lot.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, I want to ask you about this. You ask in the book a question that actually you don't answer so I want to -
KURT VONNEGUT: I'm old.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: But I want to-- think about answering this one. You write "what can be said to our young people now that psychopathic personalities — which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame — have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it their own?" What can we say to younger people who have their whole lives ahead of them?
KURT VONNEGUT: Well, you are human beings. Resourceful. Form a little society of your own. And, hang out with them. Get a gang.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: You're preaching getting into gangs?
KURT VONNEGUT: Yes. Well, look, it's--
DAVID BRANCACCIO: A good gang.
KURT VONNEGUT: Look, I don't mean to intimidate you, but I have a master's degree in anthropology.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: I'm intimidated.
KURT VONNEGUT: From the University of Chicago-- as did Saul Bellow, incidentally. But anyway, one thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they're tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable.
So yes, I tell people to formulate a little gang. And, you know, you love each other.
Very cool story. Kurt seemed like a very cool dude, and also intelligent no doubt!
Btw, I heard the exhaust on those 2-stroke Saab's smelled of roses and mustard gas.
Post a reply to: Kurt Vonnegut on 2 stroke Saab's